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NEPC show features new foodservice, retail products

Chick Goodman (left), Soquel, Calif.-based vice president of sales and marketing for Miami-based Coosemans Worldwide Inc.âs Coosemans Retail Group, and Rick Durkin, director of business development for Crystal Valley Foods, Miami, display a new line of retail bagged vegetables.

BOSTON â The New England Produce Council's annual Produce and Floral Expo packed plenty of new products on the show floor, from value-added convenience packs to foodservice offerings of fresh fruits and vegetables.

The Packer's Eastern Editor Doug Ohlemeier attended the show, talking to exhibitors on the expo floor. He collected the following news from exhibitors.

French beans come in 8- and 16-ounce bags while the snow peas, sugar snap peas, English peas, baby carrots, baby squash and asparagus tips are available in 6-count, 8-ounce retail bags as well as in 8-count, 2-pound foodservice bags, Durkin said.

âThese packs are great for food safety because no one touches the product at retail,â Durkin said.

Coosemans Retail Group is also offering traditional bags of washed snapped green beans in 2-count, 5-pound bags, with beans from Florida, Georgia, Virginia and Guatemala. Durkin said Coosemans responded to customer requests, first distributing the bagged beans last year and recently ramping up offerings, he said.

Durkin said retailers tell Coosemans the bags eliminate most shrink.

Miami-based Crystal Valley Foods is a separate company that sells bulk product to Coosemans, Durkin said.

Nolan, who has been a retail merchandiser since 1987, said she has assembled a small group of merchandisers to spread the word about Seald Sweetâs citrus program.

âI wasnât interested in doing more merchandising,â she said. âDavid Mixon (Seald Sweetâs senior vice president and chief marketing officer) pulled me in to help him. Seald Sweet is so different from years ago. Itâs exciting to see what theyâre doing.â

Nolan also merchandises for TransFresh, a division of Chiquita Brands International Inc., Cincinnati.

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About the Author:

Doug Ohlemeier

Doug Ohlemeier, who has written for The Packer since 2001, serves as eastern editor, a position he has held since August 2006. He started at The Packer as a staff writer after working for nearly a decade in commodity promotion at the Kansas Wheat Commission, where he was a marketing specialist.
Doug worked in radio and television news writing, producing and reporting for seven years in Texas, Missouri and Nebraska.
He graduated from Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, in 1984, with a bachelor of science degree in broadcast journalism and a minor in history. He earned a master’s in corporate communications from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 1991. In college, he served as a news editor of the daily O’Collegian newspaper and interned in radio and television news departments.